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Thank you, Minister and your team for being here.

I want to echo your comments about the support to the communities dealing with the forest fire situations. As you and I spoke about last week, many of those are in my riding in northern Saskatchewan. I wanted to echo those comments.

When I was first elected in 2019, I visited the community of Denare Beach. At that time, it was brought to my attention that the community was owed a significant amount of money by the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation.

To put it in perspective, the population of Denare Beach is about 800 people. Part of their community consists of the Amisk Lake reserve and some properties that are connected right in the community. There are 37 of these properties out of a total of about 500 in the whole community.

PBCN and the Village of Denare Beach have a service agreement that includes water and sewer, fire, animal control, street maintenance, recreation, garbage and recycling, etc. In essence, it's an agreement that takes care of property taxes and other services.

Thank you, Chair.

As I said, when I was first elected in 2019, I visited the community of Denare Beach. It was brought to my attention that the community was owed a significant amount of money by the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation. The population of Denare Beach is about 800 people. Part of their community consists of the Amisk Lake reserve, which is one of the eight communities of Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation. There are 37 properties that are part of the Amisk Lake reserve in this community of about 500 properties.

Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation and the Village of Denare Beach have a service agreement that consists of water and sewer, fire, animal control, street maintenance, recreation, garbage and recycling. In essence, it's an agreement that basically is in lieu of property taxes and municipal services.

I raised this issue with your predecessor and his chief of staff, starting way back in March 2020 and many times after. I brought this issue up with your deputy minister on January 24, 2022, shortly after you were appointed minister. I was assured that the ministry was aware of and had approved this agreement, and we received promise after promise of the region's being committed to resolving this issue. It still hasn't. That's over three years later, Minister.

On January 2, 2023, the village was owed about $240,000. That doesn't include the 2023 invoice yet, which will bring the total to over $300,000. Again, to put this into perspective, the village's total annual property taxes are just over $500,000, so $300,000 owing to them is very, very significant to their community.

At my request, the village leadership has shown significant patience with the process as we have tried to work at this behind the scenes. Quite frankly, I think that patience is becoming undeserved. Minister, the leadership of the village has been put in an untenable situation because of the unwillingness or the inability of ISC to ensure that the service agreements they have approved and funded are honoured and paid, but this community's patience has run out. Denare Beach does not want the promise of more meetings, nor the promise of phone calls or follow-ups. In their own words, they just need ISC to pay the bill. If not, they're going to be forced to shut off the water and stop responding to fire calls, animal control and all the other services in this agreement in order to collect what is due to them.

Minister, my question is actually quite simple. Can you commit to the people of Denare Beach—who, by the way, are watching today—that this will be resolved immediately to ensure that there is no disruption of service? In other words, is there a commitment in these estimates to just pay this bill?

I appreciate that, Minister, but just for clarity, I've had that commitment many times over the last three and half years. If we can get some assurance that this will be taken care of.... It's absolutely imperative, because we don't want to see a child mauled by a dog, or a fire at a house, or any of these horrible things that could happen if services are ended. Let's just make sure it gets done, please.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

My second question is actually pretty simple as well. I have a picture here that was sent to me by a constituent. It's a picture of a package of stuff that was found on the ground outside a service station in my riding. It's a zip-lock bag with a Canada flag, an Indigenous Services of Canada logo, that's identified as a safer inhalation meth kit.

My question is really simple in regard to the estimates. Can you tell me how much was spent on these kits last year in Canada and what the plan is in these estimates for how much we're going to spend on these kits in the coming year?

I'm sorry. My time is really limited. I want to make my point on why I bring that up.

On the comparison of what we spend on that, I've brought forward a number of initiatives of indigenous-led, land-based treatment opportunities that treat families for addictions and for mental health issues. I've brought those forward to the department on a number of occasions, and the people I have represented who bring those forward can't even get a response from the department.

To me, the challenge is the comparison between what we're spending on something like these safer inhalation meth kits and the treatment options I've brought forward. One, for example, is the White Lightning organization in Beauval. They were looking for $50,000 to invest in a facility that's already there to do land-based, indigenous-led treatment, and they can't even get a response. That's the frustration that I'm bringing forward to you today.

Thank you. I can assure you that this one was fully developed.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Ministers, for your opening comments, and to your officials for being here to answer questions today.

We had a very frank conversation on Monday with Mr. Giroux, the PBO. We talked about the significant increases in spending over the period of 2015-16 to 2022-23, but what we actually delved into more than that were the targets, the departmental results indicators and the measurements of what we're trying to achieve in these departments.

To be honest with you, the frustrating part for me—and what I heard from Mr. Giroux—is that there was a substantial failure in the ability of the departments to meet the targets they set for themselves. I emphasize the fact that it's the departments that set the targets.

I know, Minister, that you just talked about those being co-developed now, but these targets are set internally by the departments, and there are many of them that change and there are many of them that are left to be determined for years. Having my own personal experience with an organization that I served that used this kind of management system, I understand the challenges. I do have some personal experience with it.

The frustration for me is the Parliamentary Budget Officer's comment that there's not a “commensurate improvement in the ability of these organizations to achieve the goals that they had set for themselves.” In fact, he said, “Based on the qualitative review the ability to achieve the targets specified has declined.” I can drill into a bunch more in this preamble, but I'm not going to.

My question is really simple. After you read this report—I'm going to ask each of you to not talk too long, because I do have one more question I'd like to get to—what was your response to the report? Was anything done to change any processes within the department to improve this?

We're shooting at a target to improve the ability of the departments to achieve those goals that they set for themselves. Was there any response to this report internally within each of your departments?

If you could, Minister, just keep.... I do want to get to one more question. I don't want to cramp your style, but give me a short answer.

Thank you.

I want to quickly get on to one more question. At the end of our time the other day, I really tried to get to a solution-based discussion with him and say, “Okay, how do we actually come up with some ideas?”

I won't give a long preamble because I don't have much time, I don't think.

One of the things we talked about was the executive compensation component. This is not just your department; I think this is a government-wide thing and I'm looking at it from the bigger picture.

If we understand how the performance compensation works at and above executive levels.... There were a very significant number of people in both your departments who got bonuses through this process or got their at-risk pay. I get that concept, but the at-risk pay and the bonuses are tied solely to personal performance goals. They're not tied to corporate goals, not tied to the organizational goals. I think that's a failing that we have.

When I asked Mr. Giroux about it, I asked if there is merit in considering a change to make sure that the organizational goals are factored into the achievement pay. There's this whole thing that what you incent gets accomplished, right? In the organization I came from, 85% of the performance compensation of our executives was based on the organizational goals and 15% was based on the personal goals. Here we have 100% based on personal goals, if I understand the system correctly.

Would you go back and advocate within cabinet, at the cabinet table, and say that maybe we have to look at this from a broader perspective to make sure that we're incenting the right things, that we're actually accomplishing the right things by incenting the right things? That might mean making sure we tie the organizational goals to the performance system within the executive management system, if that makes any sense.

Sorry, Minister, I'm not asking you to determine the bonuses. I'm asking you to create a system that incents the proper things by saying that we need to incent managers across government—not just in your departments—to actually consider the organizational goals that we're trying to achieve. The stats that the Parliamentary Budget Officer gave us say that we're not hitting those things.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you both for being here today and for the work you've done on this.

You quoted from your executive summary the fact that financial resources allocated to providing indigenous services increased significantly over this period of 2015-16 to 2022-23. You went on to talk about the quantitative and the qualitative component of your report.

For a couple of minutes, I want to just drill into the quantitative part, and I'll come back later and hit some of the qualitative stuff.

Just doing a little bit of looking on my own, if you go back to the 2015-16 and a little bit prior to that even, the range of spending on indigenous affairs, which was through INAC back then, was in the range of $7.5 billion to $9 billion over those three years, and by the time we get to 2021-22 that number is about $29 billion. The supplementary estimates (C) for 2023 say that number is $58 billion, and the main estimates for 2023-24 start the process for next year at $49 billion.

In that same time frame, the number of FTEs has increased from about 4,500 to what we're projecting now, about 9,200 for the coming fiscal year.

These are really big numbers and these are really big changes. In the context of the quantitative component of your analysis, can you just speak to the significance or the magnitude of these changing numbers?

Then I have a follow-up on some other parts I want to talk about.

I would love to do that, as an accountant, to be honest with you, but I don't think I have time for that in my six minutes, so let's move on a little bit.

There was a fellow by the names of Ken Coates. I know we're all familiar with Ken Coates. He's a distinguished fellow and director of the aboriginal peoples project at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, and he's a Canada research chair in regional innovation at the University of Saskatchewan. I think most of us in the room would consider him a relatively non-partisan voice on these issues. We've had him at committee a few times, representing different people here.

He wrote an article in August 2022, which was just a few months after he released a report. His article was specifically in response to your report. He said:

Put bluntly, Canada is not getting what it is paying for—what’s worse, the massive spending is not improving lives in Indigenous communities.

He went on to say that Canadians believe:

If Canada spends billions on Indigenous affairs, it must mean that we care deeply about First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples. But it does nothing of the sort. While headlines emphasize dollar amounts, the statistics that tell the actual story of Indigenous well-being—around employment, health, housing conditions, suicide rates, violence and imprisonment, language, cultural revitalization—are much more sombre. When spending vast sums fails to make a substantial difference in many communities, the federal response is too often to double down and spend even more, in the absence of understanding what actually works to improve the lives of Indigenous peoples.

My question is really quite simple. Do you agree with that assessment? He was responding to your report.

As a follow up, is this common to other departments, or is it unique to CIRNAC and ISC?

Thank you.

I just have a little window to ask one last question. There's an editorial that was published just shortly after your report. You are quoted as saying, “While its increases in funding have been well-intentioned, the Indigenous bureaucracy has had trouble matching spending increases with assessing its performance on how it spends the money.” This is a little bit of a follow-up to what I just said. Can you just flush that out a little bit? What did you mean by that when you were quoted as saying that?

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

I think this will actually follow up a bit on Mr. Desjarlais' comments. I want to move onto the qualitative stuff. I told you that I wanted to talk “quantitative”, and we can do that for a long time, but let's move on, because we have only so many slots tonight.

The qualitative component focuses on the departmental results indicators, the DRIs, as you abbreviate them. These indicators are used to evaluate progress towards its goals. That's the whole purpose of this kind of management system. I've been part of that in my past.

You go on to explain some of the reasons and you talk about how some of these are more difficult to achieve and lever because of circumstances, but you also say, “Even if these components are excluded, ISC”—in particular—“still falls short of [its] ability to specify and maintain targets.” That's a clear conclusion you make.

I'm going to come back to Mr. Coates again and quote from his article. He says:

The government can and does change up targets and metrics, making it difficult to determine actual outcomes. But given the vast expenditures, such a conclusion is tragic.

This goes to exactly what Mr. Desjarlais is saying. It's about getting outcomes for the investments we're making. I'm just curious about your comment on Mr. Coates' conclusion on this particular aspect relative to the qualitative component.